In the ABC News story shown on the 22nd of February, Professor Gilbert purportedly showed, "A flaw in the design of Toyota's electronic acceleration system prevents the car's onboard computer from detecting and stopping certain short circuits that can trigger sudden speed surges ..."

"As a result, Gilbert told ABC News, the Toyota computers will not record an error code, nor will they activate the 'fail safe' system designed to shutdown the power and put the car in the 'limp home' mode."

The vehicle’s electronics were rewired and reengineered in multiple ways, in a specific sequence, and under conditions that are virtually impossible to occur in real-world conditions without visible evidence;

Toyota further cast doubt on Professor Gilbert's objectivity by saying he was working for Sean Kane, a paid advocate for trial lawyers suing Toyota.

Toyota also has posted a video by Kristen Tabar, general manager of electronics systems, Toyota Technical Center, that addresses Toyota's "concerns" with Professor Gilbert's findings, which the company claims has "misled" the "public and Congressional committees."

Dr. Gilbert said in response that he would examine Toyota's rebuttal to his work and answer them over the next few weeks. However, Sean Kane, who runs Safety Research & Strategies, Inc.responded that Dr. Gilbert's test showed - and Toyota's own tests confirmed - " ... Toyota’s failsafe system does not always detect critical errors or go into failsafe mode as the company has claimed."

Edmunds.com says that it will pay $1 million to anyone who, under controlled conditions, can "re-create unintended acceleration in a car and then solve that problem and prove the whole thing." From comments made so far, Risk Factor readers have not been too impressed with the offer.

While Toyota may have blunted Professor Gilbert's claims, it is unlikely to stop the flood of stories as to the cause of its runaway cars.

For instance, the chairperson of US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee for investigations asked Toyota last Friday for its internal test reports showing that electronics are indeed not the cause of the complaints about its runaway cars.

Then yesterday, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told Toyota that it wanted a copy of a memo that its workers supposedly sent to Toyota management in 2006 outlining safety concerns which the workers say were ignored. The Los Angeles Timesreported on the memo Sunday.

There was also an AP story over a few days ago claiming that Toyota has not been forthcoming about the information contained in its vehicle's event data recorders (EDR), thereby making it hard to determine what the causes of runaway crashes might be. The story says, "Toyota has been inconsistent - and sometimes even contradictory - in revealing exactly what the devices record and don't record, including critical data about whether the brake or accelerator pedals were depressed at the time of a crash."

Two weeks ago, Toyota announced that it was going to be shipping hundreds of EDRs to the US and making them commercially available. As recently as December, Toyota had maintained that the single device reader it had in the US was only "a prototype."

In addition, Toyota says that complaints about runaway cars after they have been fixed is mostly likely due to the fixes being done incorrectly at its dealerships, according to this story in the New York Times yesterday. If done properly, there should not be a problem Toyota said.